Helicopter failure almost resulted in tragedy

On Tuesday, the circumstances of the emergency incident that occurred at the Luzhsky training ground in the Leningrad region became known. According to preliminary data, during the exercises on September 16, the Ka-52 "Alligator" combat helicopter spontaneously collided with an uncontrolled air rocket (NAR), which almost led to the death of people. One of the main versions of the state of emergency, according to Kommersant, is a failure in the helicopter gun control system. The Ministry of Defense is already the third aviation incident for the week: last Thursday the Tu-22M3 bomber rolled out of the runway, and on Saturday the Yak-130 combat training plane crashed.

The first information about the state of emergency appeared on Tuesday in social networks, and then the site of the city news of Ekaterinburg 66.ru reported this. Referring to a well-informed source, the publication wrote that on September 17 or 18 at the Luzhsky training ground, an air-to-surface missile was triggered from a Ka-52 helicopter, resulting in "two cars being burned and two people seriously injured." "The journalists, most likely, suffered," the publication suggested. The press service of the Western Military District (ZVO) told Kommersant that there were no incidents related to the work of the army aviation on September 18. "All the messages in social networks about" volleys in the crowd of journalists, "" a large number of seriously wounded "- deliberate provocation or someone's personal stupidity," - said the representative of the ZVO. According to him, video cases recorded a case that occurred "in a different period of time," when the crews of army aviation helicopters "practiced an exercise to defeat ground targets": "The system for targeting one of the helicopters was mistakenly captured the target, as a result of hitting an unguided rocket was damaged one of the trucks without people. "

According to "Kommersant", "another time period" is September 16. As the interlocutor of Kommersant, who was close to the headquarters of the aerospace forces, actually happened at the Luzhsky training ground with a military helicopter Ka-52, which almost killed people. On that day at 14:00 Moscow time the Ka-52 helicopter pair Lieutenant Colonel Smachtin (winged - Senior Lieutenant Volchkov) took off from the airfield Pushkin (Leningrad region) to perform the "flight test of the pair for the execution of fire missions". At 14:47, after receiving the permission of the head of the test range, a spontaneous descent of the NAR-S-8 air-to-ground class occurred during the third approach on the combat course at an altitude of 50 m and a speed of about 200 km / h when the main switch of weapons was switched on. After that Senior Lieutenant Volchkov reported the incident to the head of the flight at the training ground. After receiving the command to stop the task, he changed course and returned to the base in Pushkin. Three people were slightly injured on the ground (according to RBC information they are all servicemen) and two cars were damaged: in photos from the emergency site, it is clear that the S-8 fragments literally flashed the metal shells of an army van and an armored car standing next to each other.

Two days later, President Vladimir Putin arrived at the Luzhsky training ground. According to the source close to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the state of emergency did not affect the course of the exercise "West-2017": the day after the incident, the crews of the Mi-28N and Ka-52 attack helicopters of the Army Air Defense Forces completed the air reconnaissance mission, on ground targets and covering the ground grouping of troops from the air. Mr. Putin, according to Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov, commander of the air defense mission, he highly estimated the results of the stage of the exercise.

In the Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for ZVO, as well as in the Military Prosecutor's Office of the ZVO, they refused to comment on the information about the incident. However, privately the interlocutors of "Kommersant" explained that they had not yet received any information about the incident. In the Leningrad District Court, according to unofficial data, the military investigative authorities did not apply to any petitions related to the state of emergency during the latest exercises.

According to Kommersant, to establish the circumstances of the emergency, a special commission has already been set up consisting of representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the aviation industry (in the holding Helicopters of Russia they refused to comment on the comments of Kommersant), which will determine the exact causes of the incident and determine the degree of guilt of officials. According to Kommersant sources, a spontaneous rocket collision could have occurred due to a technical malfunction in the helicopter's armament system: the investigators found that the NAR had flown without the pilot's command immediately after switching on the main weapon breaker. To confirm or refute these data, additional examinations will be conducted. Prior to that pilots Smachtin and Volchkov will be removed from flights.

Note that the incident with the Ka-52 was the third in the last days: on September 14, at the Shaikavka airbase (Kaluga region), the supersonic long-range Tu-22M3 bomber rolled out of the runway, getting seriously damaged, and on September 16 near the airfield Borisoglebsk Voronezh region) during the training flight, the trainer-combat aircraft Yak-130 crashed. In all cases, there were no human casualties.